Talk
about a headache, when Peter Halvorson was a 27-year-old young man seeking
enlightenment he drilled a hole in his skull.

The
year was 1973 and after much research, Halvorson had asked his doctor
to perform the procedure for him. The answer, unshockingly, was an unequivocal
"no." So Halvorson went for a second opinion. And a third.
And a fourth, etc., all to no avail. Finally, he administered a local
anesthetic and powered up his electric drill. His goal? An ancient practice
called trepanation that, he was promised, would yield a permanent "high"
similar to the sensation of lengthy yoga headstands.

How
did Halvorson make out? Well, he lived. The rest, of course, is in the
(third) eye of the beholder.

"I've
had the energy to pull myself up by my boot straps," says Halvorson,
a jeweler and tree grower in Pennsylvania who maintains the International
Trepanation Advocacy Group <www.trepan.com> Web site. "I've
had the ability to concentrate and stay in focus with the added benefit
of feeling good all the while. Most outstanding is an improved ability
to listen."

For
those of you experiencing trepidation about trepanation, keep in mind
that the practice has a long medical history--albeit to relieve swelling
due to serious injury, not blow your mind. The Smith College online
Museum of Ancient Inventions features a pre-power
drill Trepanation tool, circa 200 BCE, while the Archaeological
Institute of America reports on the finding in Russia of a trepaned
cranium circa 7300-6220 BC and the excavation of a 7,000-year-old
skull with two trepanation holes at a burial site in France.

"Why
the Ensisheim individual was operated on is unknown, but in African
communities that practice trepanation today, including the Kissii of
western Kenya, there are two traditional motives: therapeutic (to relieve
pressure due to skull fractures) and magical-spiritual (to cure headaches,
epilepsy, intracranial tumors, and mental illness)....The long-term
healing evident from the bone indicates the operations were successful,"
one article reads.

But
it is Halvorson's site that best contextualizes trepanation and details
ITAG's medical argument as to why a hole in your head is not a bad thing
to work toward. According to the pages within, the modern trepanation
movement (if Halvorson and a handful of other self-trepanned people
around the world constitute a "movement") began in 1962 when
Hugo Bart Huges, a medical student and psychonaut in Amsterdam, published
the book Homo Sapiens Correctus: The Mechanism of Brainbloodvolume.
Indeed, it was Huges who suggested Halvorson find a doctor to trepan
him 25 years ago.

According
to Huges, the pulse pressure in the cranial cavity of a baby is very
strong--you can actually see the soft spot on a baby's head, the fontanel,
pulse with the heartbeat. But by adulthood the skull hardens, causing
pulsation to decrease. Trepanation, he claims, increases the volume
of blood in the brain's capillaries.

The
I-Tag site goes into great detail about Huges' brainbloodvolume theories
and also provides a forum for individuals to post their opinions about
trepanation and participate in live chats on the subject. "Trepan
Man" (Halvorson) participates once a week. After all, Huges has
said, "the Web is "the new messiah." But while trepan.com
is ripe with evangelical information about holey heads--it evens sells
cool t-shirts--Halvorson doesn't ignore his critics either. And, of
course, there's no shortage of scientists who are quick to proclaim
that you need a hole in your head like you need, well, a hole in your
head.

"This
is nonsense," says Ayub Ommaya, a professor of neurosurgery at
George Washington University and the former chief of neurosurgery at
the National Institutes of Health quoted in a Washington Post article
reprinted on the I-Tag site. The risks of blood clots, brain injuries
from drilling too deep, and infections outweigh the unproven benefits,
he says.

Brain
function decreases with age, adds Louis Sokoloff, the chief of the Laboratory
of Cerebral Metabolism at the National Institute of Mental Health, in
the Post article. And even if it were possible, an increased blood flow--which
many scientists think is more related to brain function than blood volume--would
not reverse the process, he says.

Still,
Halvorson--whose healed-over 3/8 inch trepanation hole is still noticeable
as a small dent in the skin of his noggin--is convinced that trepanation
is a trip worth taking. He doesn't advise the do-it-yourself method.
(A look at the gruesome images on the site of one woman's self-trepanation
experience should be enough of a deterrent for most.) But Halvorson
does hope that by spreading the good word through the Net and other
media, interest will increase and clinical trepanation may someday even
be available as an out-patient procedure at hospitals everywhere.

"To
fully understand this physiology of consciousness expansion and to have
not allowed myself to use it to my own advantage would be like having
a gold mine in my back yard and allowing myself to be thrown off my
own property for not paying the taxes," he says.